Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

The night wore on, and soon Vera was no longer alone with Angus. One by one the ghosts glided into the hall, floating around rather aimlessly among the rafters or coasting along the walls. The truth was that they were bored. They had become so used to the strict timetable followed by the Great Hagges that when they suddenly had a lot of free time they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

Vera spotted her cousin Iphigenia standing alone in a corner, and left the well-mouth to go over to her. ‘Hello, dear. Where are Ron and Percy?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

Vera was not much of a wailer, but she knew about worry and sadness, and she could tell straight away that things were not right. Soon Iphigenia had told her about her row with Ron over that foolish sprite.

‘And now Ron is on the roof and won’t come down, and Percy spends all his time in the byre, playing with the cat.’

At that moment they both saw Kylie starting to emerge through the wall beside them.

‘Oh no!’ whispered Iphigenia, and began to thin herself out, but it was too late.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Peabody,’ said Kylie. ‘Could I have a word?

Iphigenia merely nodded.

‘It’s just…’ stammered Kylie. ‘It’s just that I wondered if I had done something to annoy you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh good, because I did so want to ask you about my boils the other night. Were they all right, do you think?’ And she smiled the little modest smile that means, ‘Wasn’t I brilliant?’ Then she added, ‘Though I’m sure you would have been much better.’

Iphigenia looked at her. That was exactly what she thought, but she wasn’t going to say it. ‘You made an impression on Miss Goneril, did you not?’ she said instead. ‘And all your fellow students. I suppose that was the idea.’

‘I wanted to do my best.’

‘And that was your best?’

‘Well, I made as many boils as I could, you know. Like Miss Fredegonda said — more is better.’

‘There is a difference between more and too much.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Frankly, darling, you were a bit over the top. Rather a vacuous performance.’

This was not a nice thing to say to someone who was hollow and couldn’t do anything about it. Fortunately Kylie wasn’t sure what ‘vacuous’ meant. However, she knew perfectly well that Iphigenia was not being kind, and she came from a long line of Scandinavian spirits who had lured bear hunters and woodcutters to their deaths for generations, so spirit she had.

‘You are annoyed, aren’t you? I wonder why. Perhaps you can’t stand that I did rather well,’ she hissed.

By this time quite an audience had gathered round the two phantoms, who were staring at each other with undisguised fury.

‘What’s going on?’ said the Phantom Welder.

‘She says I’m no good. She’s jealous,’ screeched the sprite, pointing a long pale finger at Iphigenia.

‘Not at all. If she’s too brainless to understand—’

The Phantom Welder just had to put his oar in, and that was really the cause of what happened next.

‘Oh, leave her alone, Mrs Peabody. She’s only a slip of a thing. She does her best, and that should be good enough for anybody, I reckon.’

Iphigenia’s ghostly eyes widened, her eyebrows arched, her nostrils quivered. She tossed her glorious head of burnished hair and in a voice that she had last used when playing the title role in Antony and Cleopatra , she turned to the Phantom Welder and said, ‘And as for you, you think you’re just wonderful, don’t you? No need to question anything. You have your boiler suit, your silly welding torch, your pathetic excuses for jokes, your “I am a simple working man” attitude. You have your “I can tell right from wrong”, your ‘I don’t get that arty stuff”. So pleased with yourself. So complacent. Well, let me tell you something, Mr I-like-a-simple-fry-up-no-fancy-food-for-me. Haunting isn’t a parlour game, a bit of a giggle. True haunting is high art. One must dig deep. One must tear down one’s own narrow boundaries and stand alone. One must risk everything.’

‘Crikey,’ said the Phantom Welder.

‘I am sick of this sham haunting,’ Iphigenia went on, her voice rising in a crescendo. ‘This pretending to be scared. Where’s the real thing?’

Nobody spoke. Then a nervous stink wafted towards them, and the Druid said, ‘Excuse me, but we can’t do real haunting, can we? It is against the school rules, you know, the Law of Mountwood. The Law that goes…’

‘Stop him, somebody!’ cried a lady ghost from one of Britain’s noblest families who had been starved to death by accident and had haunted the larder of her stately home ever since. It was Iphigenia who brought the Druid up short before he got into full flow; he could have gone on all night without stopping for breath. Why should a ghost breathe if he doesn’t want to?

‘Fiddlesticks, you soppy old man. “More is better”? Ha! I’m going out. Are you coming, Kylie darling? Or do you prefer to stay here and play “Boo” with Mr Simple Working Man here?’

With a violent swoosh, Iphigenia threw herself through the oaken door of Mountwood and vanished into the night.

Kylie’s blood was up, in a manner of speaking. Iphigenia’s words had stung. They had made her feel like a mincing teacher’s pet, and she wasn’t having any of that. If something was going to happen, she was going to be there. She swept out after Iphigenia.

At that moment Ron, who was getting tired of sulking on the roof, stuck his head through the ceiling and looked down.

‘What’s going on? Where’s Iffy?’

The ghosts fluttered chattering around him, telling him what had happened.

‘Whoa, hold on. Are you telling me Iffy’s gone out? In a temper? Breaking the rules? She can be a bit flighty sometimes. I blame myself. I could have stopped her. Perhaps,’ he added.

The ghosts looked at him.

‘We’ll have to go out and find them,’ said Ron. ‘Nothing else for it.’

There was nothing else for it. The ghosts dematerialized and streamed invisibly out of Mountwood, following the tingly atmosphere that Iphigenia and Kylie had left like footprints in the ether. The last to leave was the fat housemaster, who was worried that he might be caned for breaking school rules. But even he, his chins wobbling, followed in the end.

Down in the village that nestled in the valley below Mountwood was a nice little pub called the Fox and Hen. A few local farm labourers and estate workers had gathered there as usual for a quiet pint and a game of darts. It was just before closing time, and the talk turned, as it quite often did, to Mountwood. Most of them avoided the place if they could. Rumours of Angus Crawe had been around for years and years, and recently funny noises had been heard that definitely weren’t owls or foxes. Nobody would dream of going there at night. And since the arrival of the three retired ladies, they avoided it in daytime as well.

‘Ugly as sin, they are,’ said the postman, who was sitting in a corner by the fire. He had to go there to deliver letters, whether he wanted to or not. ‘Back of a bus ain’t in it. And scary too. Like you’d be turned into a frog or something if you rubbed them up the wrong way.’

The other occupants of the snuggery laughed.

Standing at the bar was a man called Vince Grafton. He wasn’t a local. He lived in the nearby market town and worked, when he worked at all, in a garage. He always wore a donkey jacket, slicked-back hair and a sly look, and he fancied his chances with the ladies, although he was married. He treated his wife terribly. When he was at home, which wasn’t very often, he was nasty to her, taking every chance he could to make her feel useless and ugly, although she wasn’t, and shouting at her if he didn’t like her cooking.